Phipps Houses opens 99-unit Echo Apartments

Real Estate Weekly, Dec 11, 1991

Phipps Houses opens 99-unit Echo Apartments

A ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the opening of Echo Apartments, at 1050 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, a 99-unit housing development for senior citizens. Working for ten years to bring this project to fruition, Echo was constructed under the federal Housing and Urban Development Section 202 Program. It is co-sponsored by Phipps Houses and the Ecumenical Community Development Organization, in cooperation with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Speakers included representatives of participating civic and community groups and government, including Reverend James Forbes of Riverside Church; Anthony M. Villane, Jr., D.D.S., Regional Administrator, U.S. Department of HUD; Roscoe C. Brown, who spoke as Trustee of Phipps Houses and also conveyed the message of Mayor David Dinkins who was forced to cancel his personal participation; and Joanne Hoffman, of Ecumenical Community Development Organization and Robert Pincus of Phipps Houses, who served as the joint master/mistress of ceremonies. The St. John the Divine Cathedral Choristers performed.

Echo Apartments, near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, was developed by Ecumenical Community Housing Opportunities, H.D.F.C., and funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the New York State Housing Finance Agency - IDDP, and the Isaac H. Tuttle Fund. Social services will be provided by the Cathedral Senior Outreach Program of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

PHOTO : At the ribbon cutting ceremony were (L to R) Dr. Anthony Villane Jr., regional administrator, U.S. Department of H.U.D.; Congressman Bill Green; Joanne Hoffman, Ecumenical Community Development Organization (ECDO); Galen Kirkland, ECDO; Robert Pincus, Phipps Houses; Reverend M. Esty Denkinger; Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, chairman, Phipps Houses; Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, trustee, Phipps Houses.